


The Spanish Opening

by unfolded73



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Chess, F/F, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 18:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14478153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Robin and Hook bond over Alice.





	The Spanish Opening

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic started from a tumblr post by @killianmesmalls about Robin and Hook walking over to Alice’s cabin together. Thanks to @j-philly-b for the chess idea.

“If you’re just going to lurk nearby in the bushes, we could walk over there together, you know.”

Killian looked up from his spot sitting (brooding) on the low wall outside Tiana’s castle and saw Robin standing before him, a letter outstretched in her hand. When he didn’t take the missive immediately, she shook it at him until he did.

“I don’t ‘lurk’.”

“You totally lurk. I mean, it’s sweet, don’t get me wrong. Alice thinks it’s sweet. I’m just saying, there’s no reason you couldn’t walk with me when I deliver your letters.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t want to intrude on your…” Gesturing vaguely with his hand, he felt his face flush. “You know.” 

“‘ _You know_ ,’” Robin mocked, making air quotes.

“All I’m saying is, you aren’t visiting my daughter just to deliver my letters.”

Robin stood up a little bit straighter. “And you don’t approve.”

“Why wouldn’t I approve?” he asked, and then immediately grimaced. “No, I mean, obviously I know why you’d think I wouldn’t approve.”

“Yeah, don’t just pretend like being gay is so not a big deal that you didn’t even notice. It wasn’t that way in Storybrooke, much as people liked to imagine it was, and it’s definitely not that way here.” She dropped her bow and quiver on the ground and sat down on the wall next to him, kicking the backs of her boots against the stone.

“You’ll find pirates are rather liberal when it comes to that sort of thing,” he said. Realizing he hadn’t conversed much with the woman his daughter seemed to have fallen in love with, he cleared his throat, feeling awkward. “It was difficult for you in Storybrooke?” He didn’t know much of the town, in truth, but Henry certainly spoke of it fondly.

Robin shrugged. “It was okay most of the time, to be honest. Teenagers can be idiots, but I made people respect me by…” She laughed. “Honestly, I have no idea what I did. Made them believe they wanted to be one of my friends through the sheer force of my personality, I guess.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “You’d be a good pirate captain.”

Robin laughed. “Sorry, I get seasick really easily.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’ve been on your ship. Or, you know, the other version of it. The one in Storybrooke.”

A connection between Robin and his doppelganger hadn’t occurred to him, and he felt his jealousy for the other man rear up. The man that Henry looked up to as a father. The man who had married a princess and was free to raise a child of his own with a supportive wife, with family and friends around him, not trapped in a tower with no one else for company. The man who was free to take his family out on his ship whenever he wanted. “You’ve been aboard the _Jolly Roger_?”

“Once, and I booted over the side. So sailing’s probably not for me.” She played absently with the end of her braid. “Don’t hold that against me.”

“I won’t, lass.”

They sat in silence for a moment. “Couldn’t the two of you use mirror magic to communicate?” Robin asked, glancing at him.

He scraped his hook on the stone wall, perversely satisfied by the irritating noise it made. “We tried. Regina established a link between two mirrors for us, but for some reason, it triggered the poison in my heart. Even looking at her from a distance makes it ache,” he said, rubbing his chest. He closed his eyes, and could almost feel the familiar searing pain of the poison, a permanent resident under his rib cage.

“That really sucks.”

“Aye.”

There was a rustle of wings as a flock of starlings rose from the trees, disturbed by some unseen predator, perhaps. He and Robin watched as they traced a complicated pattern in the cloudless sky before resettling among the branches.

“When did you know?” Robin asked, glancing at him, “that Alice was only interested in girls?”

He thought back to his days with Alice in the tower. “I lost her when she was still quite young, so issues of her sexuality hadn’t really come up yet. But I do remember when I read her tales of princes and princesses, even when she was seven or eight years old, she would announce her intention to rescue ‘her princess’ from a dragon someday.”

“That’s adorable.”

“Aye.” He smiled. “So perhaps on some level, I knew all along. I certainly wasn’t shocked by the information.”

“I’m not a princess, though, and I’m not in need of rescuing.”

“Everyone is occasionally in need of rescuing, love.”

Robin shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

The settled into silence again. “She’s led such a solitary life,” he said, his eyes squeezing shut again with regret like a cold fist on his heart. “Thank you for… bringing some sunshine into her existence.”

“Are you kidding? _She’s_ the ray of sunshine, not me. The way she always believes the best of people. The way her whole damn face lights up when she smiles, she’s…” Robin trailed off, and Killian turned his head to watch her. “People back at home used to talk about true love and happy endings and to be honest, I thought it was a bunch of bullshit.”

Killian chuckled at that.

“But Alice smiles, and… I don’t know. It makes me believe in all that stuff.” She groaned and covered her face. “God, it’s so corny. She makes me so unbelievably corny.”

“If my distant recollection is to be believed, love does that to people.”

Robin raised her eyebrows. “‘Distant recollection’? Jeez, Hook, we need to get you a date.”

He tried to smile and failed. “Not really my focus as of late.”

“Why not?”

He wasn’t sure if he could explain it to her. He could barely explain it to himself. “Perhaps it was all those years raising Alice alone, or perhaps it was my singular focus on finding a way to be with my daughter again after Gothel poisoned my heart. Maybe it was the very fact that my heart was poisoned. For whatever reason, I fear that my ability to experience that kind of love -- the kind that my other self has,” he couldn’t resist adding with no small amount of bitterness, “may have atrophied.” 

“Wow, you can be kind of a bummer, you know that?” Robin said.

Now he did smile. “Forgive me for being a ‘bummer.’”

Robin hoped down off the wall. “You’re forgiven.” She picked up her bow and quiver of arrows and swung them over her shoulder. “So it’s agreed then, right? The next time you want to check on Alice, we head over there together? Keep each other company?”

“Aye, as you say.”

She gave him a playful shove on the shoulder. “Later, Hook.”

~*~

“I have a plan for today, you know,” Robin said, brushing at her nose in an attempt to stop Alice’s hair from tickling it.

Alice giggled, her bare skin sliding against Robin’s as she rolled over. “I thought this was your plan.”

Smiling to concede the point, Robin let her hand settle on Alice’s cheek. “Okay, two plans.”

“What’s the other plan, then?”

“Get dressed and set up your chess board, and I’ll show you.”

Sitting up, Alice frowned at her in confusion, and Robin noticed her the first time that her brow furrowed in the same way that her father’s did. “You don’t even like chess, though,” Alice said.

Reaching up, Robin brushed her thumb against Alice’s forehead to smooth out the worry lines. “I know, but just set up the board.”

Once they were dressed and seated on either side of the chess board, Robin pulled out her smartphone. “Remember this?”

“Yeah, but you said you couldn’t zap it anymore, though.”

Robin grinned at her girlfriend. “Charge it, and my mom figured out a way to charge it with magic. Better than that, even though this land doesn’t have cell towers, Regina magicked it so that it would communicate with my mom’s phone, which is currently in the hands of your father.”

Alice’s eyes filled with fear and she shook her head. “No, it’ll be just like mirror magic, his heart--.”

“No, it’s okay, we’re not going to use it that way. We’re going to use it so the two of you can play chess.”

“How?”

“I’ll show you.” She nodded toward the board. “He told me to do this first,” Robin said, picking up the white pawn in front of her queen and moving it forward. “Now you go.”

Alice frowned and eyed her suspiciously, but she moved her own queen’s pawn in turn.

“Okay, here goes nothing.” Holding the phone up, she took a picture of the board and messaged the photo to Zelena’s phone. “This might take a while,” she said, watching for a response. “Not sure how fast the data speed is with my aunt’s spell.”

After a handful of seconds, a reply appeared, but to Robin, the short collection of letters and numbers looked like gibberish. “What does that mean?” she said, holding the phone up to Alice. 

Alice squinted at it. “It means move your knight,” Alice said, pointing. “That one. Move it there,” she said, pointing to a blank space. Robin followed the instructions and then noticed Alice was grinning at the board. “My papa likes to get his knights out early,” she said. “I often make him regret it.”

Another message popped up on the phone, and Robin looked at it. “He says, ‘She probably thinks she’s going to make me regret getting my knight out early, doesn’t she?’”

Alice laughed with delight. “This is amazing!” She moved another of her pieces and then bounced up and down on her seat with impatience. “Okay, send him the picture.”

Positioning the camera, Robin snapped another photo. “I’ll have to learn that chess code so that I can make this go faster.”

“Robin, thank you so much for doing this, it’s…” Alice paused, her eyes welling with years. “It’s just unbelievably kind of you.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Robin responded, her eyes on the phone. “Your dad loves you a lot, and… you know.”

“What?”

Screwing up her courage, Robin met Alice’s gaze. “And so do I.”

Alice rose from her seat and moved around the table, kneeling down next to Robin’s chair. “Tell him to hold on for a minute because we need to kiss right now.”

Laughing, Robin set the phone aside. “I’m not telling him that,” she said as Alice’s lips met hers.

“I love you, too,” Alice whispered.


End file.
